The suggestion from my friend emailing me was that the parents should have been standing in the dock with their child and why doesn't Parliament change the law to make this happen? This followed from the comments of the judge in the case who said to Hauwai that his parents should be standing with him to answer the charge.
I have to wonder that if we can join the dots so easily - and we all can, because it is simple logic - then how many generations of parents will be standing before the judge answering for the horrendous crimes of their children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren?
Then, I guess, how early do we start? When the kid shoplifts from the supermarket or pinches a schoolmate's bike? These earlier crimes being pretty common among children.
These petty crimes, too, are not indicative of future offending in the way other crimes might be, such as cruelty to animals or other children or roaming the streets late at night when kids with better futures are tucked up in bed.
Hauwai's mother countered that she had asked for help from social services and received none, and couldn't be in court with her son because it was embarrassing and too far for her to go.
She also suggested that there was food at home and his associations with the gang Killer Bees lay at the root of the offending. She pointed to his previous conviction and incarceration for aggravated robbery of a local shop.
I think her explanation asked more questions than it answered. How far is too far to go when your 17-year-old is up for such a horrific crime? Why did he feel the need to belong to a gang at all?
These things don't just happen overnight, on a whim, or in isolation but at the end of a chain of events and circumstances that lower the barrier between what behaviour is acceptable and what can't be tolerated.
Hungry kids don't beat up people, they appeal to those with the food and ask for it.
Over recent times, we have increased the accountability of parents of young criminals by enabling orders to be made against them and for summonses to be issued to bring them to court. Hauwai's age may have prevented this as he has now reached the adult jurisdiction, but I doubt the moral culpability has shifted.
The fear is that he will soon create the start of another generation who feel trapped into a cycle of offending that will create more victims and more excuses as weak and pitiful has his and his mother's.
Our challenge as a government is to get smarter on crime and to ensure that the cycle is broken and becomes an invalid excuse and explanation for crimes such as these. Throwing money at it won't work, but caring enough as a society to get up to our elbows and knees in this insidious problem will have a lasting effect.
